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THE WRITINGS OF JOHN BURROUGHSWITH PORTRAITS AND MANY ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME III

BIRDS AND POETSWITH OTHER PAPERS

PREFACE

I have deliberated a long time about coupling some of my sketchesof outdoor nature with a few chapters of a more purely literarycharacter, and thus confiding to my reader what absorbs anddelights me inside my four walls, as well as what pleases andengages me outside those walls; especially since I have aimed tobring my outdoor spirit and method within, and still to look uponmy subject with the best naturalist's eye I could command.

I hope, therefore, he will not be scared away when I boldlyconfront him in the latter portions of my book with this name ofstrange portent, Walt Whitman, for I assure him that in thismisjudged man he may press the strongest poetic pulse that has yetbeaten in America, or perhaps in modern times.Then, these chapters are a proper supplement or continuation of mythemes and their analogy in literature, because in them we shall"follow out these lessons of the earth and air," and behold theirapplication to higher matters.

It is not an artificially graded path strewn with roses thatinvites us in this part, but, let me hope, something better, arugged trail through the woods or along the beach where we shallnow and then get a whiff of natural air, or a glimpse of somethingto

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONSBARN SWALLOW (colored) From a drawing by L. A. FuertesEMERSON'S HOUSE IN CONCORD From a photograph by Herbert W. GleasonA RIVER VIEW IN APRIL From a drawing by Charles H. WoodburyFLICKER From a drawing by L. A. Fuertes CowsIN RURAL LANDSCAPE From a photograph by Herbert W. GleasonVIEW FROM A HILLTOP From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason

BIRDS AND POETS

I

BIRDS AND POETS

"In summer, when the shawes be shene, And leaves be large and long, It is full merry in fair forest To hear the fowlés' song. The wood-wele sang, and wolde not cease, Sitting upon the spray; So loud, it wakened Robin Hood In the greenwood where he lay."

It might almost be said that the birds are all birds of the poetsand of no one else, because it is only the poetical temperamentthat fully responds to them. So true is this, that all the greatornithologists--original namers and biographers of the birds--havebeen poets in deed if not in word. Audubon is a notable case inpoint, who, if he had not the tongue or the pen of the poet,certainly had the eye and ear and heart--"the fluid and attachingcharacter"--and the singleness of purpose, the enthusiasm, theunworldliness, the love, that characterize the true and divine raceof bards.

So had Wilson, though perhaps not in as large a measure; yet hetook fire as only a poet can. While making a journey on foot toPhiladelphia, shortly after landing in this country, he caughtsight of the red-headed woodpecker flitting among the trees,--abird that shows like a tricolored scarf among the foliage,--and itso kindled his enthusiasm that his life was devoted to the pursuitof the birds from that day. It was a lucky hit. Wilson had alreadyset up as a poet in Scotland, and was still fermenting when thebird met his eye and suggested to his soul a new outlet for itsenthusiasm.

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. Abird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intenseis his life,--large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his framecharged with buoyancy and his heart with song. The beautifulvagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, andknowing no bounds,--how many human aspirations are realized intheir free, holiday lives, and how many suggestions to the poet intheir flight and song!

Indeed, is not the bird the original type and teacher of the poet,and do we not demand of the human lark or thrush that he "shake outhis carols" in the same free and spontaneous manner as his wingedprototype? Kingsley has shown how surely the old minnesingers andearly ballad-writers have learned of the birds, taking their key-note from the blackbird, or the wood-lark, or the throstle, andgiving utterance to a melody as simple and unstudied. Such thingsas the following were surely caught from the fields or the woods:--

"She sat down below a thorn, Fine flowers in the valley, And there has she her sweet babe borne, And the green leaves they grow rarely."

Or the best lyric pieces, how like they are to certain bird-songs!--clear, ringing, ecstatic, and suggesting that challenge andtriumph which the outpouring of the male bird contains. (Is not thegenuine singing, lyrical quality essentially masculine?) Keats andShelley, perhaps more notably than any other English poets, havethe bird organization and the piercing wild-bird cry. This, ofcourse, is not saying that they are the greatest poets, but thatthey have preëminently the sharp semi-tones of the sparrows and thelarks.

But when the general reader thinks of the birds of the poets, hevery naturally calls to mind the renowned birds, the lark and thenightingale, Old World melodists, embalmed in Old World poetry, butoccasionally appearing on these shores, transported in the verse ofsome callow singer.

The very oldest poets, the towering antique bards, seem to makelittle mention of the song-birds. They loved better the soaring,swooping birds of prey, the eagle, the ominous birds, the vultures,the storks and cranes, or the clamorous sea-birds and the screaminghawks. These suited better the rugged, warlike character of thetimes and the simple, powerful souls of the singers themselves.Homer must have heard the twittering of the swallows, the cry ofthe plover, the voice of the turtle, and the warble of thenightingale; but they were not adequate symbols to express what hefelt or to adorn his theme. Aeschylus saw in the eagle "the dog ofJove," and his verse cuts like a sword with such a conception.

It is not because the old bards were less as poets, but that theywere more as men. To strong, susceptible characters, the music ofnature is not confined to sweet sounds. The defiant scream of thehawk circling aloft, the wild whinny of the loon, the whooping ofthe crane, the booming of the bittern, the vulpine bark of theeagle, the loud trumpeting of the migratory geese sounding down outof the midnight sky; or by the seashore, the coast of New Jersey orLong Island, the wild crooning of the flocks of gulls, repeated,continued by the hour, swirling sharp and shrill, rising andfalling like the wind in a storm, as they circle above the beach ordip to the dash of the waves,--are much more welcome in certainmoods than any and all mere bird-melodies, in keeping as they arewith the shaggy and untamed features of ocean and woods, andsuggesting something like the Richard Wagner music in theornithological orchestra.

"Nor these alone whose notes Nice-fingered art must emulate in vain, But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime In still repeated circles, screaming loud, The jay, the pie, and even the boding owl, That hails the rising moon, have charms for me,"

says Cowper. "I never hear," says Burns in one of his letters, "theloud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wildmixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers in an autumnal morning,without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm ofdevotion or poetry."

Even the Greek minor poets, the swarm of them that are representedin the Greek Anthology, rarely make affectionate mention of thebirds, except perhaps Sappho, whom Ben Jonson makes speak of thenightingale as--

"The dear glad angel of the spring."

The cicada, the locust, and the grasshopper are often referred to,but rarely by name any of the common birds. That Greek grasshoppermust have been a wonderful creature. He was a sacred object inGreece, and is spoken of by the poets as a charming songster. Whatwe would say of birds the Greek said of this favorite insect. WhenSocrates and Phaedrus came to the fountain shaded by the plane-tree, where they had their famous discourse, Socrates said:"Observe the freshness of the spot, how charming and verydelightful it is, and how summer-like and shrill it sounds from thechoir of grasshoppers." One of the poets in the Anthology finds agrasshopper struggling in a spider's web, which he releases withthe words:--

Still another sings how a grasshopper took the place of a brokenstring on his lyre, and "filled the cadence due."

"For while six chords beneath my fingers cried, He with his tuneful voice the seventh supplied; The midday songster of the mountain set His pastoral ditty to my canzonet; And when he sang, his modulated throat Accorded with the lifeless string I smote."

While we are trying to introduce the lark in this country, why nottry this Pindaric grasshopper also?

It is to the literary poets and to the minstrels of a softer agethat we must look for special mention of the song-birds and forpoetical rhapsodies upon them. The nightingale is the most generalfavorite, and nearly all the more noted English poets have sung herpraises. To the melancholy poet she is melancholy, and to thecheerful she is cheerful. Shakespeare in one of his sonnets speaksof her song as mournful, while Martial calls her the "mostgarrulous" of birds. Milton sang:--

"Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy, Thee, chantress, oft the woods among I woo, to hear thy evening song."

To Wordsworth she told another story:--

"O nightingale! thou surely art A creature of ebullient heart; These notes of thine,--they pierce and pierce,-- Tumultuous harmony and fierce! Thou sing'st as if the god of wine Had helped thee to a valentine; A song in mockery and despite Of shades, and dews, and silent night, And steady bliss, and all the loves Now sleeping in these peaceful groves."

In a like vein Coleridge sang:--

"'T is the merry nightingale That crowds and hurries and precipitates With fast, thick warble his delicious notes."

Keats's poem on the nightingale is doubtless more in the spirit ofthe bird's strain than any other. It is less a description of thesong and more the song itself. Hood called the nightingale

"The sweet and plaintive Sappho of the dell."

I mention the nightingale only to point my remarks upon itsAmerican rival, the famous mockingbird of the Southern States,which is also a nightingale,--a night-singer,--and which no doubtexcels the Old World bird in the variety and compass of its powers.The two birds belong to totally distinct families, there being noAmerican species which answers to the European nightingale, asthere are that answer to the robin, the cuckoo, the blackbird, andnumerous others. Philomel has the color, manners, and habits of athrush,--our hermit thrush,--but it is not a thrush at all, but awarbler. I gather from the books that its song is protracted andfull rather than melodious,--a capricious, long-continued warble,doubling and redoubling, rising and falling, issuing from thegroves and the great gardens, and associated in the minds of thepoets with love and moonlight and the privacy of sequestered walks.All our sympathies and attractions are with the bird, and we do notforget that Arabia and Persia are there back of its song.

_Our_ nightingale has mainly the reputation of the caged bird, andis famed mostly for its powers of mimicry, which are trulywonderful, enabling the bird to exactly reproduce and even improveupon the notes of almost any other songster. But in a state offreedom it has a song of its own which is infinitely rich andvarious. It is a garrulous polyglot when it chooses to be, andthere is a dash of the clown and the buffoon in its nature whichtoo often flavors its whole performance, especially in captivity;but in its native haunts, and when its love-passion is upon it, theserious and even grand side of its character comes out. In Alabamaand Florida its song may be heard all through the sultry summernight, at times low and plaintive, then full and strong. A friendof Thoreau and a careful observer, who has resided in Florida,tells me that this bird is a much more marvelous singer than it hasthe credit of being. He describes a habit it has of singing on thewing on moonlight nights, that would be worth going South to hear.Starting from a low bush, it mounts in the air and continues itsflight apparently to an altitude of several hundred feet, remainingon the wing a number of minutes, and pouring out its song with theutmost clearness and abandon,--a slowly rising musical rocket thatfills the night air with harmonious sounds. Here are both the larkand nightingale in one; and if poets were as plentiful down Southas they are in New England, we should have heard of this song longago, and had it celebrated in appropriate verse. But so far onlyone Southern poet, Wilde, has accredited the bird this song. Thishe has done in the following admirable sonnet:--

TO THE MOCKINGBIRD

Winged mimic of the woods! thou motley fool! Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe? Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe. Wit--sophist--songster--Yorick of thy tribe, Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school, To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe, Arch scoffer, and mad Abbot of Misrule! For such thou art by day--but all night long Thou pour'st a soft, sweet, pensive, solemn strain, As if thou didst in this, thy moonlight song, Like to the melancholy Jaques, complain, Musing on falsehood, violence, and wrong, And sighing for thy motley coat again.

Aside from this sonnet, the mockingbird has got into poeticalliterature, so far as I know, in only one notable instance, andthat in the page of a poet where we would least expect to findhim,--a bard who habitually bends his ear only to the musical surgeand rhythmus of total nature, and is as little wont to turn asidefor any special beauties or points as the most austere of theancient masters. I refer to Walt Whitman's "Out of the cradleendlessly rocking," in which the mockingbird plays a part. Thepoet's treatment of the bird is entirely ideal and eminentlycharacteristic. That is to say, it is altogether poetical and notat all ornithological; yet it contains a rendering or freetranslation of a bird-song--the nocturne of the mockingbird,singing and calling through the night for its lost mate--that Iconsider quite unmatched in our literature:--

Once, Paumanok, When the snows had melted, and the Fifth-month grass was growing, Up this seashore, in some briers, Two guests from Alabama--two together, And their nest, and four light green eggs, spotted with brown, And every day the he-bird, to and fro, near at hand, And every day the she-bird, crouched on her nest, silent, with bright eyes, And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.

_Shine! Shine! Shine! Pour down your warmth, great Sun! While we bask--we two together._

_Two together! Winds blow South, or winds blow North, Day come white, or night come black, Home, or rivers and mountains from home, Singing all time, minding no time, If we two but keep together._

Till of a sudden, Maybe killed unknown to her mate, One forenoon the she-bird crouched not on the nest, Nor returned that afternoon, nor the next, Nor ever appeared again.

And thenceforward all summer, in the sound of the sea, And at night, under the full of the moon, in calmer weather, Over the hoarse surging of the sea, Or flitting from brier to brier by day, I saw, I heard at intervals, the remaining one, the he-bird, The solitary guest from Alabama.

Yes, when the stars glistened, All night long, on the prong of a moss-scalloped stake, Down, almost amid the slapping waves, Sat the lone singer, wonderful, causing tears.

He called on his mate: He poured forth the meanings which I, of all men, know.

. . . . . . . . . . .

_Soothe! soothe! soothe! Close on its wave soothes the wave behind, And again another behind, embracing and lapping, every one close, But my love soothes not me, not me._

_Low hangs the moon--it rose late. Oh it is lagging--oh I think it is heavy with love, with love._

_Oh madly the sea pushes, pushes upon the land, With love--with love._

_O night! do I not see my love fluttering out there among the breakers! What is that little black thing I see there in the white?_

_Loud! loud! loud! Loud I call to you, my love! High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves: Surely you must know who is here, is here; You must know who I am, my love._

_Low-hanging moon! What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow? Oh it is the shape, the shape of my mate! O moon, do not keep her from me any longer._

_Land! land! O land! Whichever way I turn, oh I think you could give my mate back again, if you only would; For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look._

_O rising stars! Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of you._

_O throat! O trembling throat! Sound clearer through the atmosphere! Pierce the woods, the earth; Somewhere listening to catch you, must be the one I want._

_Shake out, carols! Solitary here--the night's carols! Carols of lonesome love! Death's carols! Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon! Oh, under that moon, where she droops almost down into the sea! O reckless, despairing carols._

_But soft! sink low! Soft! let me just murmur; And do you wait a moment, you husky-noised sea; For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me, So faint--I must be still, be still to listen! But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me._

_Hither, my love! Here I am! Here! With this just-sustained note I announce myself to you; This gentle call is for you, my love, for you._

_Do not be decoyed elsewhere! That is the whistle of the wind--it is not my voice; That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray; Those are the shadows of leaves._

_O darkness! Oh in vain! Oh I am very sick and sorrowful._

. . . . . . . . . . .

The bird that occupies the second place to the nightingale inBritish poetical literature is the skylark, a pastoral bird as thePhilomel is an arboreal,-- a creature of light and air and motion,the companion of the plowman, the shepherd, the harvester,--whosenest is in the stubble and whose tryst is in the clouds. Its lifeaffords that kind of contrast which the imagination loves,--onemoment a plain pedestrian bird, hardly distinguishable from theground, the next a soaring, untiring songster, reveling in theupper air, challenging the eye to follow him and the ear toseparate his notes.

The lark's song is not especially melodious, but is blithesome,sibilant, and unceasing. Its type is the grass, where the birdmakes its home, abounding, multitudinous, the notes nearly allalike and all in the same key, but rapid, swarming, prodigal,showering down as thick and fast as drops of rain in a summershower.

Many noted poets have sung the praises of the lark, or been kindledby his example. Shelley's ode and Wordsworth's "To a Skylark" arewell known to all readers of poetry, while every schoolboy willrecall Hogg's poem, beginning:--

"Bird of the wilderness, Blithesome and cumberless, Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea! Emblem of happiness, Blest is thy dwelling-place-- Oh to abide in the desert with thee!"

I heard of an enthusiastic American who went about English fieldshunting a lark with Shelley's poem in his hand, thinking no doubtto use it as a kind of guide-book to the intricacies and harmoniesof the song. He reported not having heard any larks, though I havelittle doubt they were soaring and singing about him all the time,though of course they did not sing to his ear the song that Shelleyheard. The poets are the best natural historians, only you mustknow how to read them. They translate the facts largely and freely.A celebrated lady once said to Turner, "I confess I cannot see innature what you do." "Ah, madam," said the complacent artist,"don't you wish you could!"

Shelley's poem is perhaps better known, and has a higher reputationamong literary folk, than Wordsworth's; it is more lyrical andlark-like; but it is needlessly long, though no longer than thelark's song itself, but the lark can't help it, and Shelley can. Iquote only a few stanzas:--

"In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning Thou dost float and run, Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

"The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven, In the broad daylight Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

"Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see--we feel that it is there;

"All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when Night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed."

Wordsworth has written two poems upon the lark, in one of which hecalls the bird "pilgrim of the sky." This is the one quoted byEmerson in "Parnassus." Here is the concluding stanza:--

"Leave to the nightingale her shady wood; A privacy of glorious light is thine, Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood Of harmony, with instinct more divine; Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam, True to the kindred points of heaven and home."

The other poem I give entire:--

"Up with me! up with me into the clouds! For thy song, Lark, is strong; Up with me, up with me into the clouds! Singing, singing, With clouds and sky about thee ringing, Lift me, guide me till I find That spot which seems so to thy mind!

"I have walked through wilderness dreary, And to-day my heart is weary; Had I now the wings of a Faery Up to thee would I fly. There is madness about thee, and joy divine In that song of thine; Lift me, guide me high and high To thy banqueting-place in the sky.

"Joyous as morning Thou art laughing and scorning; Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest, And, though little troubled with sloth, Drunken Lark! thou wouldst be loth To be such a traveler as I. Happy, happy Liver! With a soul as strong as a mountain river, Pouring out praise to the Almighty Giver, Joy and jollity be with us both!

"Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven, Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind; But hearing thee, or others of thy kind, As full of gladness and as free of heaven, I, with my fate contented, will plod on, And hope for higher raptures, when life's day is done."

But better than either--better and more than a hundred pages--isShakespeare's simple line,--

"Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings,"

or John Lyly's, his contemporary,--

"Who is't now we hear? None but the lark so shrill and clear; Now at heaven's gate she claps her wings, The morn not waking till she sings."

We have no well-known pastoral bird in the Eastern States thatanswers to the skylark. The American pipit or titlark and the shorelark, both birds of the far north, and seen in the States only infall and winter, are said to sing on the wing in a similar strain.Common enough in our woods are two birds that have many of thehabits and manners of the lark--the water-thrush and the golden-crowned thrush, or oven-bird. They are both walkers, and the latterfrequently sings on the wing up aloft after the manner of the lark.Starting from its low perch, it rises in a spiral flight far abovethe tallest trees, and breaks out in a clear, ringing, ecstaticsong, sweeter and more richly modulated than the skylark's, butbrief, ceasing almost before you have noticed it; whereas theskylark goes singing away after you have forgotten him and returnedto him half a dozen times.

But on the Great Plains, of the West there; is a bird whose songresembles the skylark's quite closely and is said to be not at allinferior. This is Sprague's pipit, sometimes called the Missouriskylark, an excelsior songster, which from far up in thetransparent blue rains down its notes for many minutes together. Itis, no doubt, destined to figure in the future poetical literatureof the West.

Throughout the northern and eastern parts of the Union the larkwould find a dangerous rival in the bobolink, a bird that has noEuropean prototype, and no near relatives anywhere, standing quitealone, unique, and, in the qualities of hilarity and musicaltintinnabulation, with a song unequaled. He has already a secureplace in general literature, having been laureated by no less apoet than Bryant, and invested with a lasting human charm in thesunny page of Irving, and is the only one of our songsters, Ibelieve, that the mockingbird cannot parody or imitate. He affordsthe most marked example of exuberant pride, and a glad, rollicking,holiday spirit, that can be seen among our birds. Every noteexpresses complacency and glee. He is a beau of the first pattern,and, unlike any other bird of my acquaintance, pushes his gallantryto the point of wheeling gayly into the train of every female thatcomes along, even after the season of courtship is over and thematches are all settled; and when she leads him on too wild achase, he turns, lightly about and breaks out with a song isprecisely analogous to a burst of gay and self-satisfied laughter,as much as to say, _"Ha! ha! ha! I must have my fun, MissSilverthimble, thimble, thimble, if I break every heart in themeadow, see, see, see!"_

At the approach of the breeding season the bobolink undergoes acomplete change; his form changes, his color changes, his flightchanges. From mottled brown or brindle he becomes black and white,earning, in some localities, the shocking name of "skunk bird;" hissmall, compact form becomes broad and conspicuous, and his ordinaryflight is laid aside for a mincing, affected gait, in which heseems to use only the very tips of his wings. It is very noticeablewhat a contrast he presents to his mate at this season, not only incolor but in manners, she being as shy and retiring as he isforward and hilarious. Indeed, she seems disagreeably serious andindisposed to any fun or jollity, scurrying away at his approach,and apparently annoyed at every endearing word and look. It issurprising that all this parade of plumage and tinkling of cymbalsshould be gone through with and persisted in to please a creatureso coldly indifferent as she really seems to be. If RobertO'Lincoln has been stimulated into acquiring this holiday uniformand this musical gift by the approbation of Mrs. Robert, as Darwin,with his sexual selection principle, would have us believe, thenthere must have been a time when the females of this tribe were notquite so chary of their favors as they are now. Indeed, I neverknew a female bird of any kind that did not appear utterlyindifferent to the charms of voice and plumage that the male birdsare so fond of displaying. But I am inclined to believe that themales think only of themselves and of outshining each other, andnot at all of the approbation of their mates, as, in an analogouscase in a higher species, it is well known whom the females dressfor, and whom they want to kill with envy!

I know of no other song-bird that expresses so much self-consciousness and vanity, and comes so near being an ornithologicalcoxcomb. The red-bird, the yellowbird, the indigo-bird, the oriole,the cardinal grosbeak, and others, all birds of brilliant plumageand musical ability, seem quite unconscious of self, and neither bytone nor act challenge the admiration of the beholder.

By the time the bobolink reaches the Potomac, in September, he hasdegenerated into a game-bird that is slaughtered by tens ofthousands in the marshes. I think the prospects now are of hisgradual extermination, as gunners and sportsmen are clearly on theincrease, while the limit of the bird's productivity in the Northhas no doubt been reached long ago. There are no more meadows to beadded to his domain there, while he is being waylaid and cut offmore and more on his return to the South. It is gourmand eatgourmand, until in half a century more I expect the blithest andmerriest of our meadow songsters will have disappeared before therapacity of human throats.

But the poets have had a shot at him in good time, and havepreserved some of his traits. Bryant's poem on this subject doesnot compare with his lines "To a Water-Fowl,"--a subject so wellsuited to the peculiar, simple, and deliberate motion of his mind;at the same time it is fit that the poet who sings of "The Plantingof the Apple-Tree" should render into words the song of "Robert ofLincoln." I subjoin a few stanzas:--

ROBERT OF LINCOLN

Merrily swinging on brier and weed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink: Snug and safe is that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers. Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest, Wearing a bright black wedding-coat, White are his shoulders and white his crest, Hear him call in his merry note: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink: Look what a nice new coat is mine, Sure there was never a bird so fine. Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife, Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, Passing at home a patient life, Broods in the grass while her husband sings. Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink: Brood, kind creature; you need not fear Thieves and robbers while I am here. Chee, chee, chee.

But it has been reserved for a practical ornithologist, Mr. WilsonFlagg, to write by far the best poem on the bobolink that I haveyet seen. It is much more in the mood and spirit of the actual songthan Bryant's poem:--

THE O'LINCOLN FAMILY

A flock of merry singing-birds were sporting in the grove; Some were warbling cheerily, and some were making love: There were Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, Conquedle,-- A livelier set was never led by tabor, pipe, or fiddle,-- Crying, "Phew, shew, Wadolincon, see, see, Bobolincon, Down among the tickletops, hiding in the buttercups! I know the saucy chap, I see his shining cap Bobbing in the clover there--see, see, see!"

Up flies Bobolincon, perching on an apple-tree, Startled by his rival's song, quickened by his raillery. Soon he spies the rogue afloat, curveting in the air, And merrily he turns about, and warns him to beware! "'T is you that would a-wooing go, down among the rushes O! But wait a week, till flowers are cheery,--wait a week,and, ere you marry, Be sure of a house wherein to tarry! Wadolink, Whiskodink, Tom Denny, wait, wait, wait!"

Every one's a funny fellow; every one's a little mellow; Follow, follow, follow, follow, o'er the hill and in the hollow! Merrily, merrily, there they hie; now they rise and now they fly; They cross and turn, and in and out, and down in the middle, and wheel about,-- With a "Phew, shew, Wadolincon! listen to me, Bobolincon!-- Happy's the wooing that's speedily doing, that's speedily doing, That's merry and over with the bloom of the clover! Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, follow, follow me!"

Many persons, I presume, have admired Wordsworth's poem on thecuckoo, without recognizing its truthfulness, or how thoroughly, inthe main, the description applies to our own species. If the poemhad been written in New England or New York, it could not havesuited our case better:--

"O blithe New-comer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice, O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice?

"While I am lying on the grass, Thy twofold shout I hear, From hill to hill it seems to pass, At once far off, and near.

"Though babbling only to the Vale, Of sunshine and of flowers, Thou bringest unto me a tale Of visionary hours.

"Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery;

"The same whom in my schoolboy days I listened to; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky.

"To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen.

"And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again.

"O blesséd Bird! the earth we pace Again appears to be An unsubstantial, faery place; That is fit home for thee!"

Logan's stanzas, "To the Cuckoo," have less merit both as poetryand natural history, but they are older, and doubtless the latterpoet benefited by them. Burke admired them so much that, while on avisit to Edinburgh, he sought the author out to compliment him:--

The European cuckoo is evidently a much gayer bird than ours, andmuch more noticeable.

"Hark, how the jolly cuckoos sing 'Cuckoo!' to welcome in the spring,"

says John Lyly three hundred years agone. Its note is easilyimitated, and boys will render it so perfectly as to deceive anybut the shrewdest ear. An English lady tells me its voice remindsone of children at play, and is full of gayety and happiness. It isa persistent songster, and keeps up its call from morning to night.Indeed, certain parts of Wordsworth's poem--those that refer to thebird as a mystery, a wandering, solitary voice--seem to fit ourbird better than the European species. Our cuckoo is in fact asolitary wanderer, repeating its loud, guttural call in the depthsof the forest, and well calculated to arrest the attention of apoet like Wordsworth, who was himself a kind of cuckoo, a solitaryvoice, syllabling the loneliness that broods over streams andwoods,--

"And once far off, and near."

Our cuckoo is not a spring bird, being seldom seen or heard in theNorth before late in May. He is a great devourer of canker-worms,and, when these pests appear, he comes out of his forest seclusionand makes excursions through the orchards stealthily and quietly,regaling himself upon those pulpy, fuzzy titbits. His coat of deepcinnamon brown has a silky gloss and is very beautiful. His note orcall is not musical but loud, and has in a remarkable degree thequality of remoteness and introvertedness. It is like a vocallegend, and to the farmer bodes rain.

It is worthy of note, and illustrates some things said fartherback, that birds not strictly denominated songsters, but crierslike the cuckoo, have been quite as great favorites with the poets,and have received as affectionate treatment at their hands, as havethe song-birds. One readily recalls Emerson's "Titmouse,"Trowbridge's "Pewee," Celia Thaxter's "Sandpiper," and others of alike character.

It is also worthy of note that the owl appears to be a greaterfavorite with the poets than the proud, soaring hawk. The owl isdoubtless the more human and picturesque bird; then he belongs tothe night and its weird effects. Bird of the silent wing andexpansive eye, grimalkin in feathers, feline, mousing, hauntingruins" and towers, and mocking the midnight stillness with thyuncanny cry! The owl is the great bugaboo of the feathered tribes.His appearance by day is hailed by shouts of alarm and derisionfrom nearly every bird that flies, from crows down to sparrows.They swarm about him like flies, and literally mob him back intohis dusky retreat. Silence is as the breath of his nostrils to him,and the uproar that greets him when he emerges into the open dayseems to alarm and confuse him as it does the pickpocket wheneverybody cries Thief.

But the poets, I say, have not despised him:--

"The lark is but a bumpkin fowl; He sleeps in his nest till morn; But my blessing upon the jolly owl That all night blows his horn."

Both Shakespeare and Tennyson have made songs about him. This isShakespeare's, from "Love's Labor's Lost," and perhaps hasreference to the white or snowy owl:--

"When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail; When blood is nipped and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whoo! Tu-whit! tu-whoo! a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

"When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw; When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whoo! Tu-whit! Tu-whoo! a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot."

There is, perhaps, a slight reminiscence of this song in Tennyson's"Owl:"--

"When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits.

"When merry milkmaids click the latch, And rarely smells the new-mown hay, And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay, Twice or thrice his roundelay; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits."

Tennyson has not directly celebrated any of the more famous birds,but his poems contain frequent allusions to them. The

of "In Memoriam," is doubtless the nightingale. And here we havethe lark:--

"Now sings the woodland loud and long, And distance takes a lovelier hue, And drowned in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song."

And again in this from "A Dream of Fair Women:"--

"Then I heard A noise of some one coming through the lawn, And singing clearer than the crested bird That claps his wings at dawn."

The swallow is a favorite bird with Tennyson, and is frequentlymentioned, beside being the principal figure in one of thosecharming love-songs in "The Princess." His allusions to the birds,as to any other natural feature, show him to be a careful observer,as when he speaks of

"The swamp, where hums the dropping snipe."

His single bird-poem, aside from the song I have quoted, is "TheBlackbird," the Old World prototype of our robin, as if our birdhad doffed the aristocratic black for a more democratic suit onreaching these shores. In curious contrast to the color of itsplumage is its beak, which is as yellow as a kernel of Indian corn.The following are the two middle stanzas of the poem:--

"Yet, though I spared thee all the spring, Thy sole delight is, sitting still, With that gold dagger of thy bill To fret the summer jenneting.

"A golden bill! the silver tongue Cold February loved is dry; Plenty corrupts the melody That made thee famous once, when young."

Shakespeare, in one of his songs, alludes to the blackbird as theouzel-cock; indeed, he puts quite a flock of birds in this song:--

"The ouzel-cock so black of hue, With orange tawny bill; The throstle with his note so true, The wren with little quill; The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, The plain song cuckoo gray, Whose note full many a man doth mark, And dares not answer nay."

So far as external appearances are concerned,--form, plumage, graceof manner,--no one ever had a less promising subject than hadTrowbridge in the "Pewee." This bird, if not the plainest dressed,is the most unshapely in the woods. It is stiff and abrupt in itsmanners and sedentary in its habits, sitting around all day, in thedark recesses of the woods, on the dry twigs and branches, utteringnow and then its plaintive cry, and "with many a flirt and flutter"snapping up its insect game.

The pewee belongs to quite a large family of birds, all of whomhave strong family traits, and who are not the most peaceable andharmonious of the sylvan folk. They are pugnacious, harsh-voiced,angular in form and movement, with flexible tails and broad, flat,bristling beaks that stand to the face at the angle of a turn-upnose, and most of them wear a black cap pulled well down over theireyes. Their heads are large, neck and legs short, and elbows sharp.The wild Irishman of them all is the great crested flycatcher, alarge, leather-colored or sandy-complexioned bird that prowlsthrough the woods, uttering its harsh, uncanny note and wagingfierce warfare upon its fellows.The exquisite of the family, and the braggart of the orchard, isthe kingbird, a bully that loves to strip the feathers off its moretimid neighbors such as the bluebird, that feeds on the stinglessbees of the hive, the drones, and earns the reputation of greatboldness by teasing large hawks, while it gives a wide berth tolittle ones.

The best beloved of them all is the phoebe-bird, one of thefirstlings of the spring, of whom so many of our poets have madeaffectionate mention.

The wood pewee is the sweetest voiced, and, notwithstanding theungracious things I have said of it and of its relations, merits tothe full all Trowbridge's pleasant fancies. His poem is indeed avery careful study of the bird and its haunts, and is good poetryas well as good ornithology:--

"The listening Dryads hushed the woods; The boughs were thick, and thin and few The golden ribbons fluttering through; Their sun-embroidered, leafy hoods The lindens lifted to the blue; Only a little forest-brook The farthest hem of silence shook; When in the hollow shades I heard-- Was it a spirit or a bird? Or, strayed from Eden, desolate, Some Peri calling to her mate, Whom nevermore her mate would cheer? 'Pe-ri! pe-ri! peer!'

. . . . . . . .

"To trace it in its green retreat I sought among the boughs in vain; And followed still the wandering strain, So melancholy and so sweet, The dim-eyed violets yearned with pain. 'T was now a sorrow in the air, Some nymph's immortalized despair Haunting the woods and waterfalls; And now, at long, sad intervals, Sitting unseen in dusky shade, His plaintive pipe some fairy played, With long-drawn cadence thin and clear,-- 'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!'

"Long-drawn and clear its closes were-- As if the hand of Music through The sombre robe of Silence drew A thread of golden gossamer; So pure a flute the fairy blew. Like beggared princes of the wood, In silver rags the birches stood; The hemlocks, lordly counselors, Were dumb; the sturdy servitors, In beechen jackets patched and gray, Seemed waiting spellbound all the day That low, entrancing note to hear,-- 'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!'

"I quit the search, and sat me down Beside the brook, irresolute, And watched a little bird in suit Of sober olive, soft and brown, Perched in the maple branches, mute; With greenish gold its vest was fringed, Its tiny cap was ebon-tinged, With ivory pale its wings were barred, And its dark eyes were tender-starred. "Dear bird," I said, "what is thy name?" And thrice the mournful answer came, So faint and far, and yet so near,-- 'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!'

"For so I found my forest bird,-- The pewee of the loneliest woods, Sole singer in these solitudes, Which never robin's whistle stirred, Where never bluebird's plume intrudes. Quick darting through the dewy morn, The redstart trilled his twittering horn And vanished in thick boughs; at even, Like liquid pearls fresh showered from heaven, The high notes of the lone wood thrush Fell on the forest's holy hush; But thou all day complainest here,-- 'Pe-wee! pe-wee! peer!'"

Emerson's best natural history poem is the "Humble-Bee,"--a poem asgood in its way as Burns's poem on the mouse; but his later poem,"The Titmouse," has many of the same qualities, and cannot fail tobe acceptable to both poet and naturalist.

The chickadee is indeed a truly Emersonian bird, and the poet showshim to be both a hero and a philosopher. Hardy, active, social, awinter bird no less than a summer, a defier of both frost and heat,lover of the pine-tree, and diligent searcher after truth in theshape of eggs and larvae of insects, preëminently a New Englandbird, clad in black and ashen gray, with a note the most cheeringand reassuring to be heard in our January woods,--I know of noneother of our birds so well calculated to captivate the Emersonianmuse.

Emerson himself is a northern hyperborean genius,--a winter birdwith a clear, saucy, cheery call, and not a passionate summersongster. His lines have little melody to the ear, but they havethe vigor and distinctness of all pure and compact things. They arelike the needles of the pine--"the snow loving pine"--more than theemotional foliage of the deciduous trees, and the titmouse becomesthem well:--

"Up and away for life! be fleet!-- The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, Sings in my ears, my hands are stones, Curdles the blood to the marble bones, Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, And hems in life with narrowing fence. Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,-- The punctual stars will vigil keep,-- Embalmed by purifying cold; The wind shall sing their dead march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.

"Softly,--but this way fate was pointing, 'T was coming fast to such anointing, When piped a tiny voice hard by, Gay and polite, a cheerful cry, _Chick-chickadeedee!_ saucy note, Out of sound heart and merry throat, As if it said 'Good day, good sir! Fine afternoon, old passenger! Happy to meet you in these places, Where January brings few faces.'

"This poet, though he lived apart, Moved by his hospitable heart, Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort, To do the honors of his court, As fits a feathered lord of land; Flew near, with soft wing grazed my hands Hopped on the bough, then darting low, Prints his small impress on the snow, Shows feats of his gymnastic play, Head downward, clinging to the spray.

"Here was this atom in full breath, Hurling defiance at vast death; This scrap of valor just for play Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray, As if to shame my weak behavior; I greeted loud my little savior, 'You pet! what dost here? and what for? In these woods, thy small Labrador, At this pinch, wee San Salvador! What fire burns in that little chest, So frolic, stout, and self-possest? Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine; Ashes and jet all hues outshine. Why are not diamonds black and gray, To ape thy dare-devil array? And I affirm, the spacious North Exists to draw thy virtue forth. I think no virtue goes with size; The reason of all cowardice Is, that men are overgrown, And, to be valiant, must come down To the titmouse dimension.'

. . . . . . . .

"I think old Caesar must have heard In northern Gaul my dauntless bird, And, echoed in some frosty wold, Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold. And I will write our annals new And thank thee for a better clew. I, who dreamed not when I came here To find the antidote of fear, Now hear thee say in Roman key, _Poean! Veni, vidi, vici."_

A late bird-poem, and a good one of its kind, is Celia Thaxter's"Sandpiper," which recalls Bryant's "Water-Fowl" in its successfulrendering of the spirit and atmosphere of the scene, and thedistinctness with which the lone bird, flitting along the beach, isbrought before the mind. It is a woman's or a feminine poem, asBryant's is characteristically a man's.

The sentiment or feeling awakened by any of the aquatic fowls ispreëminently one of loneliness. The wood duck which your approachstarts from the pond or the marsh, the loon neighing down out ofthe April sky, the wild goose, the curlew, the stork, the bittern,the sandpiper, awaken quite a different train of emotions fromthose awakened by the land-birds. They all have clinging to themsome reminiscence and suggestion of the sea. Their cries echo itswildness and desolation; their wings are the shape of its billows.

Of the sandpipers there are many varieties, found upon the coastand penetrating inland along the rivers and water-courses, one ofthe most interesting of the family, commonly called the "tip-up,"going up all the mountain brooks and breeding in the sand alongtheir banks; but the characteristics are the same in all, and theeye detects little difference except in size.

The walker on the beach sees it running or flitting before him,following up the breakers and picking up the aquatic insects lefton the sands; and the trout-fisher along the farthest inland streamlikewise intrudes upon its privacy. Flitting along from stone tostone seeking its food, the hind part of its body "teetering" upand down, its soft gray color blending it with the pebbles and therocks, or else skimming up or down the stream on its long, convexwings, uttering its shrill cry, the sandpiper is not a bird of thesea merely; and Mrs. Thaxter's poem is as much for the dwellerinland as for the dweller upon the coast:--

THE SANDPIPER

Across the narrow beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I; And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered driftwood bleached and dry. The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit,-- One little sandpiper and I.

Above our heads the sullen clouds Scud black and swift across the sky; Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds Stand out the white lighthouses high. Almost as far as eye can reach I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit along the beach,-- One little sandpiper and I.

I watch him as he skims along, Uttering his sweet and mournful cry; He starts not at my fitful song, Or flash of fluttering drapery; He has no thought of any wrong; He scans me with a fearless eye. Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong, The little sandpiper and I.

Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night When the loosed storm breaks furiously? My driftwood fire will burn so bright! To what warm shelter canst thou fly? I do not fear for thee, though wroth The tempest rushes through the sky; For are we not God's children both, Thou, little sandpiper, and I?

Others of our birds have been game for the poetic muse, but in mostcases the poets have had some moral or pretty conceit to convey,and have not loved the bird first. Mr. Lathrop preaches a little inhis pleasant poem, "The Sparrow," but he must some time have lookedupon the bird with genuine emotion to have written the first twostanzas:--

"Glimmers gay the leafless thicket Close beside my garden gate, Where, so light, from post to wicket, Hops the sparrow, blithe, sedate: Who, with meekly folded wing, Comes to sun himself and sing.

"It was there, perhaps, last year, That his little house he built; For he seems to perk and peer, And to twitter, too, and tilt The bare branches in between, With a fond, familiar mien."

The bluebird has not been overlooked, and Halleek, Longfellow, andMrs. Sigourney have written poems upon him, but from none of themdoes there fall that first note of his in early spring,--a notethat may be called the violet of sound, and as welcome to the ear,heard above the cold, damp earth; as is its floral type to the eyea few weeks later Lowell's two lines come nearer the mark:--

"The bluebird, shifting his light load of song From post to post along the cheerless fence."

Or the first swallow that comes twittering up the southern valley,laughing a gleeful, childish laugh, and awakening such memories inthe heart, who has put him in a poem? So the hummingbird, too,escapes through the finest meshes of rhyme.

The most melodious of our songsters, the wood thrush and the hermitthrush,--birds whose strains, more than any others, express harmonyand serenity,--have not yet, that I am aware, had reared to themtheir merited poetic monument, unless, indeed, Whitman has donethis service for the hermit thrush in his "President Lincoln'sBurial Hymn." Here the threnody is blent of three chords, theblossoming lilac, the evening star, and the hermit thrush, thelatter playing the most prominent part throughout the composition.It is the exalting and spiritual utterance of the "solitary singer"that calms and consoles the poet when the powerful shock of thePresident's assassination comes upon him, and he flees from thestifling atmosphere and offensive lights and conversation of thehouse,--

"Forth to hiding, receiving night that talks not,Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still."

Numerous others of our birds would seem to challenge attention bytheir calls and notes. There is the Maryland yellowthroat, forinstance, standing in the door of his bushy tent, and calling outas you approach, _"which way, sir! which way, sir!"_ If he saysthis to the ear of common folk, what would he not say to the poet?One of the peewees says _"stay there!"_ with great emphasis. Thecardinal grosbeak calls out _"what cheer" "what cheer;"" thebluebird says _"purity," "purity," "purity;"_ the brown thrasher,or ferruginous thrush, according to Thoreau, calls out to thefarmer planting his corn, _"drop it," "drop it," "cover it up,""cover it up"_ The yellow-breasted chat says _"who," "who"_ and_"tea-boy"_ What the robin says, caroling that simple strain fromthe top of the tall maple, or the crow with his hardy haw-haw, orthe pedestrain meadowlark sounding his piercing and long-drawn notein the spring meadows, the poets ought to be able to tell us. Ionly know the birds all have a language which is very expressive,and which is easily translatable into the human tongue.

II TOUCHES OF NATURE

I

WHEREVER Nature has commissioned one creature to prey upon another,she has preserved the balance by forewarning that other creature ofwhat she has done. Nature says to the cat, "Catch the mouse," andshe equips her for that purpose; but on the selfsame day she saysto the mouse, "Be wary,--the cat is watching for you." Nature takescare that none of her creatures have smooth sailing, the wholevoyage at least. Why has she not made the mosquito noiseless andits bite itchless? Simply because in that case the odds would betoo greatly in its favor. She has taken especial pains to enablethe owl to fly softly and silently, because the creatures it preysupon are small and wary, and never venture far from their holes.She has not shown the same caution in the case of the crow, becausethe crow feeds on dead flesh, or on grubs and beetles, or fruit andgrain, that do not need to be approached stealthily. The big fishlove to cat up the little fish, and the little fish know it, and,on the very day they are hatched, seek shallow water, and putlittle sandbars between themselves and their too loving parents.

How easily a bird's tail, or that of any fowl, or in fact any partof the plumage, comes out when the hold of its would-be capturer isupon this alone; and how hard it yields in the dead bird! No doubtthere is relaxation in the former case. Nature says to the pursuer,"Hold on," and to the pursued, "Let your tail go." What is thetortuous, zigzag course of those slow-flying moths for but to makeit difficult for the birds to snap them up? The skunk is a slow,witless creature, and the fox and lynx love its meat; yet itcarries a bloodless weapon that neither likes to face.

I recently heard of an ingenious method a certain other simple andslow-going creature has of baffling its enemy. A friend of mine waswalking in the fields when he saw a commotion in the grass a fewyards off. Approaching the spot, he found a snake--the commongarter snake--trying to swallow a lizard. And how do you supposethe lizard was defeating the benevolent designs of the snake? Bysimply taking hold of its own tail and making itself into a hoop.The snake went round and round, and could find neither beginningnor end. Who was the old giant that found himself wrestling withTime? This little snake had a tougher customer the other day in thebit of eternity it was trying to swallow.

The snake itself has not the same wit, because I lately saw a blacksnake in the woods trying to swallow the garter snake, and he hadmade some headway, though the little snake was fighting every inchof the ground, hooking his tail about sticks and bushes, andpulling back with all his might, apparently not liking the look ofthings down there at all. I thought it well to let him have a goodtaste of his own doctrines, when I put my foot down against furtherproceedings.

This arming of one creature against another is often cited as anevidence of the wisdom of Nature, but it is rather an evidence ofher impartiality. She does not care a fig more for one creaturethan for another, and is equally on the side of both, or perhaps itwould be better to say she does not care a fig for either. Everycreature must take its chances, and man is no exception. We canride if we know how and are going her way, or we can be run over ifwe fall or make a mistake. Nature does not care whether the hunterslay the beast or the beast the hunter; she will make good compostof them both, and her ends are prospered whichever succeeds.

"If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again."

What is the end of Nature? Where is the end of a sphere? Thesphere balances at any and every point. So everything in Nature isat the top, and yet no _one_ thing is at the top.

She works with reference to no measure of time, no limit of space,and with an abundance of material, not expressed by exhaustless.Did you think Niagara a great exhibition of power? What is that,then, that withdraws noiseless and invisible in the ground about,and of which Niagara is but the lifting of the finger?

Nature is thoroughly selfish, and looks only to her own ends. Onething she is bent upon, and that is keeping up the supply,multiplying endlessly and scattering as she multiplies. Did Naturehave in view our delectation when she made the apple, the peach,the plum, the cherry? Undoubtedly; but only as a means to her ownprivate ends. What a bribe or a wage is the pulp of thesedelicacies to all creatures to come and sow their seed! And Naturehas taken care to make the seed indigestible, so that, though thefruit be eaten, the germ is not, but only planted.

God made the crab, but man made the pippin; but the pippin cannotpropagate itself, and exists only by violence and usurpation. Baconsays, "It is easier to deceive Nature than to force her," but itseems to me the nurserymen really force her. They cut off the headof a savage and clap on the head of a fine gentleman, and the crabbecomes a Swaar or a Baldwin. Or is it a kind of deceptionpracticed upon Nature, which succeeds only by being carefullyconcealed? If we could play the same tricks upon her in the humanspecies, how the great geniuses could be preserved and propagated,and the world stocked with them! But what a frightful condition ofthings that would be! No new men, but a tiresome and endlessrepetition of the old ones,--a world perpetually stocked withNewtons and Shakespeares!

We say Nature knows best, and has adapted this or that to our wantsor to our constitution,--sound to the ear, light and color to theeye; but she has not done any such thing, but has adapted man tothese things. The physical cosmos is the mould, and man is themolten metal that is poured into it. The light fashioned the eye,the laws of sound made the ear; in fact, man is the outcome ofNature and not the reverse. Creatures that live forever in thedark have no eyes; and would not any one of our senses perish andbe shed, as it were, in a world where it could not be used?

II

It is well to let down our metropolitan pride a little. Man thinkshimself at the top, and that the immense display and prodigality ofNature are for him. But they are no more for him than they are forthe birds and beasts, and he is no more at the top than they are.He appeared upon the stage when the play had advanced to a certainpoint, and he will disappear from the stage when the play hasreached another point, and the great drama will go on without him.The geological ages, the convulsions and parturition throes of theglobe, were to bring him forth no more than the beetles. Is not allthis wealth of the seasons, these solar and sidereal influences,this depth and vitality and internal fire, these seas, and rivers,and oceans, and atmospheric currents, as necessary to the life ofthe ants and worms we tread under foot as to our own? And does thesun shine for me any more than for yon butterfly? What I mean tosay is, we cannot put our finger upon this or that and say, Here isthe end of Nature. The Infinite cannot be measured. The plan ofNature is so immense,--but she has no plan, no scheme, but to go onand on forever. What is size, what is time, distance, to theInfinite? Nothing. The Infinite knows no time, no space, nogreat, no small, no beginning, no end.

I sometimes think that the earth and the worlds are a kind ofnervous ganglia in an organization of which we can form noconception, or less even than that. If one of the globules of bloodthat circulate in our veins were magnified enough million times, wemight see a globe teeming with life and power. Such is this earthof ours, coursing in the veins of the Infinite. Size is onlyrelative, and the imagination finds no end to the series eitherway.

III

Looking out of the car window one day, I saw the pretty and unusualsight of an eagle sitting upon the ice in the river, surrounded byhalf a dozen or more crows. The crows appeared as if looking up tothe noble bird and attending his movements. "Are those its young?"asked a gentleman by my side. How much did that man know--notabout eagles, but about Nature? If he had been familiar with geeseor hens, or with donkeys, he would not have asked that question.The ancients had an axiom that he who knew one truth knew alltruths; so much else becomes knowable when one vital fact isthoroughly known. You have a key, a standard, and cannot bedeceived. Chemistry, geology, astronomy, natural history, alladmit one to the same measureless interiors.

I heard a great man say that he could see how much of the theologyof the day would fall before the standard of him who had got eventhe insects. And let any one set about studying these creaturescarefully, and he will see the force of the remark. We learn thetremendous doctrine of metamorphosis from the insect world; andhave not the bee and the ant taught man wisdom from the first? Iwas highly edified the past summer by observing the ways and doingsof a colony of black hornets that established themselves under oneof the projecting gables of my house. This hornet has thereputation of being a very ugly customer, but I found it no troubleto live on the most friendly terms with her. She was as littledisposed to quarrel as I was. She is indeed the eagle amonghornets, and very noble and dignified in her bearing. She used tocome freely into the house and prey upon the flies. You would hearthat deep, mellow hum, and see the black falcon poising on wing, orstriking here and there at the flies, that scattered on herapproach like chickens before a hawk. When she had caught one, shewould alight upon some object and proceed to dress and draw hergame. The wings were sheared off, the legs cut away, the bristlestrimmed, then the body thoroughly bruised and broken. When the workwas completed, the fly was rolled up into a small pellet, and withit under her arm the hornet flew to her nest, where no doubt in duetime it was properly served up on the royal board. Every dinnerinside these paper walls is a state dinner, for the queen is alwayspresent.

I used to mount the ladder to within two or three feet of the nestand observe the proceedings. I at first thought the workshop mustbe inside,--a place where the pulp was mixed, and perhaps treatedwith chemicals; for each hornet, when she came with her burden ofmaterials, passed into the nest, and then, after a few moments,emerged again and crawled to the place of building. But I one daystopped up the entrance with some cotton, when no one happened tobe on guard, and then observed that, when the loaded hornet couldnot get inside, she, after some deliberation, proceeded to theunfinished part and went forward with her work. Hence I inferredthat maybe the hornet went inside to report and to receive orders,or possibly to surrender her material into fresh hands. Her careerwhen away from the nest is beset with dangers; the colony is neverlarge, and the safe return of every hornet is no doubt a matter ofsolicitude to the royal mother.

The hornet was the first paper-maker, and holds the originalpatent. The paper it makes is about like that of the newspaper;nearly as firm, and made of essentially the same material,--woodyfibres scraped from old rails and boards. And there is news on it,too, if one could make out the characters.

When I stopped the entrance with cotton, there was no commotion orexcitement, as there would have been in the case of yellow-jackets.Those outside went to pulling, and those inside went to pushing andchewing. Only once did one of the outsiders come down and look mesuspiciously in the face, and inquire very plainly what my businessmight be up there. I bowed my head, being at the top of a twenty-foot ladder, and had nothing to say.

The cotton was chewed and moistened about the edges till everyfibre was loosened, when the mass dropped. But instantly theentrance was made smaller, and changed so as to make the feat ofstopping it more difficult.

IV

There are those who look at Nature from the standpoint ofconventional and artificial life,-- from parlor windows and throughgilt-edged poems,--the. sentimentalists. At the other extreme arethose who do not look at Nature at all, but are a grown part ofher, and look away from her toward the other class,--thebackwoodsmen and pioneers, and all rude and simple persons. Thenthere are those in whom the two are united or merged,--the greatpoets and artists. In them the sentimentalist is corrected andcured, and the hairy and taciturn frontiersman has had experienceto some purpose. The true poet knows more about Nature than thenaturalist because he carries her open secrets in his heart.Eckermann could instruct Goethe in ornithology, but could notGoethe instruct Eckermann in the meaning and mystery of the bird?It is my privilege to number among my friends a man who has passedhis life in cities amid the throngs of men, who never goes to thewoods or to the country, or hunts or fishes, and yet he is the truenaturalist. I think he studies the orbs. I think day and night andthe stars, and the faces of men and women, have taught him allthere is worth knowing.

We run to Nature because we are afraid of man. Our artists paintthe landscape because they cannot paint the human face. If we couldlook into the eyes of a man as coolly as we can into the eyes of ananimal, the products of our pens and brushes would be quitedifferent from what they are.

V

But I suspect, after all, it makes but little difference to whichschool you go, whether to the woods or to the city. A sincere manlearns pretty much the same things in both places. The differencesare superficial, the resemblances deep and many. The hermit is ahermit, and the poet a poet, whether he grow up in the town or thecountry. I was forcibly reminded of this fact recently on openingthe works of Charles Lamb after I had been reading those of ourHenry Thoreau. Lamb cared nothing for nature, Thoreau for littleelse. One was as attached to the city and the life of the streetand tavern as the other to the country and the life of animals andplants. Yet they are close akin. They give out the same tone andare pitched in about the same key. Their methods are the same; soare their quaintness and scorn of rhetoric. Thoreau has the drierhumor, as might be expected, and is less stomachic. There is morejuice and unction in Lamb, but this he owes to his nationality.Both are essayists who in a less reflective age would have beenpoets pure and simple. Both were spare, high-nosed men, and I fancya resemblance even in their portraits. Thoreau is the Lamb of NewEngland fields and woods, and Lamb is the Thoreau of London streetsand clubs. There was a willfulness and perversity about Thoreau,behind which he concealed his shyness and his thin skin, and therewas a similar foil in Lamb, though less marked, on account of hisgood-nature; that was a part of his armor, too.

VI

Speaking of Thoreau's dry humor reminds me how surely the oldEnglish unctuous and sympathetic humor is dying out or has died outof our literature. Our first notable crop of authors had it,--Paulding, Cooper, Irving, and in a measure Hawthorne,--but ourlater humorists have it not at all, but in its stead anintellectual quickness and perception of the ludicrous that is notunmixed with scorn.

One of the marks of the great humorist, like Cervantes, or Sterne,or Scott, is that he approaches his subject, not through his headmerely, but through his heart, his love, his humanity. His humor isfull of compassion, full of the milk of human kindness, and doesnot separate him from his subject, but unites him to it by vitalties. How Sterne loved Uncle Toby and sympathized with him, andCervantes his luckless knight! I fear our humorists would have madefun of them, would have shown them up and stood aloof superior, and"laughed a laugh of merry scorn." Whatever else the great humoristor poet, or any artist, may be or do, there is no contempt in hislaughter. And this point cannot be too strongly insisted on inview of the fact that nearly all our humorous writers seemimpressed with the conviction that their own dignity and self-respect require them to _look down_ upon what they portray. But itis only little men who look down upon anything or speak down toanybody. One sees every day how clear it is that specially fine,delicate, intellectual persons cannot portray satisfactorilycoarse, common, uncultured characters. Their attitude is at oncescornful and supercilious. The great man, like Socrates, or Dr.Johnson, or Abraham Lincoln, is just as surely coarse as he isfine, but the complaint I make with our humorists is that they arefine and not coarse in any healthful and manly sense. A great partof the best literature and the best art is of the vital fluids, thebowels, the chest, the appetites, and is to be read and judged onlythrough love and compassion. Let us pray for unction, which is themarrowfat of humor, and for humility, which is the badge ofmanhood.

As the voice of the American has retreated from his chest to histhroat and nasal passages, so there is danger that his contributionto literature will soon cease to imply any blood or viscera, orhealthful carnality, or depth of human and manly affection, andwill be the fruit entirely of our toploftical brilliancy andcleverness.

What I complain of is just as true of the essayists and the criticsas of the novelists. The prevailing tone here also is born of afeeling of immense superiority. How our lofty young men, forinstance, look down upon Carlyle, and administer their masterlyrebukes to him! But see how Carlyle treats Burns, or Scott, orJohnson, or Novalis, or any of his heroes. Ay, there's the rub; hemakes heroes of them, which is not a trick of small natures. He cansay of Johnson that he was "moonstruck," but it is from no loftyheight of fancied superiority, but he uses the word as a naturalistuses a term to describe an object he loves.

What we want, and perhaps have got more of than I am ready toadmit, is a race of writers who affiliate with their subjects, andenter into them through their blood, their sexuality and manliness,instead of standing apart and criticising them and writing aboutthem through mere intellectual cleverness and "smartness."

VII

There is a feeling in heroic poetry, or in a burst of eloquence,that I sometimes catch in quite different fields. I caught it thismorning, for instance, when I saw the belated trains go by, andknew how they had been battling with storm, darkness, and distance,and had triumphed. They were due at my place in the night, but didnot pass till after eight o'clock in the morning. Two trainscoupled together,--the fast mail and the express,--making animmense line of coaches hauled by two engines. They had come fromthe West, and were all covered with snow and ice, like soldierswith the dust of battle upon them. They had massed their forces,and were now moving with augmented speed, and with a resolutionthat was epic and grand. Talk about the railroad dispelling theromance from the landscape; if it does, it brings the heroicelement in. The moving train is a proud spectacle, especially onstormy and tempestuous nights. When I look out and see its light,steady and unflickering as the planets, and hear the roar of itsadvancing tread, or its sound diminishing in the distance, I amcomforted and made stout of heart. O night, where is thy stay! Ospace, where is thy victory! Or to see the fast mail pass in themorning is as good as a page of Homer. It quickens one's pulse forall day. It is the Ajax of trains. I hear its defiant, warningwhistle, hear it thunder over the bridges, and its sharp, rushingring among the rocks, and in the winter mornings see its glancing,meteoric lights, or in summer its white form bursting through thesilence and the shadows, its plume of smoke lying flat upon itsroofs and stretching far behind,--a sight better than a battle. Itis something of the same feeling one has in witnessing any wild,free careering in storms, and in floods in nature; or in beholdingthe charge of an army; or in listening to an eloquent man, or to ahundred instruments of music in full blast,--it is triumph,victory. What is eloquence but mass in motion,--a flood, acataract, an express train, a cavalry charge? We are literallycarried away, swept from our feet, and recover our senses again asbest we can.

I experienced the same emotion when I saw them go by with thesunken steamer. The procession moved slowly and solemnly. It waslike a funeral cortege,--a long line of grim floats and barges andboxes, with their bowed and solemn derricks, the pall-bearers; andunderneath in her watery grave, where she had been for six months,the sunken steamer, partially lifted and borne along. Next day theprocession went back again, and the spectacle was still moreeloquent. The steamer had been taken to the flats above and raisedtill her walking-beam was out of water; her bell also was exposedand cleaned and rung, and the wreckers' Herculean labor seemednearly over. But that night the winds and the storms held highcarnival. It looked like preconcerted action on the part of tide,tempest, and rain to defeat these wreckers, for the elements allpulled together and pulled till cables and hawser snapped likethreads. Back the procession started, anchors were dragged orlost, immense new cables were quickly taken ashore and fastened totrees; but no use: trees were upturned, the cables stretched tillthey grew small and sang like harp-strings, then parted; back, backagainst the desperate efforts of the men, till within a few feet ofher old grave, when there was a great commotion among the craft,floats were overturned, enormous chains parted, colossal timberswere snapped like pipestems, and, with a sound that filled all theair, the steamer plunged to the bottom again in seventy feet ofwater.

VIII

I am glad to observe that all the poetry of the midsummerharvesting has not gone out with the scythe and the whetstone. Theline of mowers was a pretty sight, if one did not sympathize toodeeply with the human backs turned up there to the sun, and thesound of the whetstone, coming up from the meadows in the dewymorning, was pleasant music. But I find the sound of the mowing-machine and the patent reaper is even more in tune with the voicesof Nature at this season. The characteristic sounds of midsummerare the sharp, whirring crescendo of the cicada or harvest fly, andthe rasping, stridulous notes of the nocturnal insects. The mowing-machine repeats and imitates these sounds. 'T is like the hum of alocust or the shuffling of a mighty grasshopper. More than that,the grass and the grain at this season have become hard. Thetimothy stalk is like a file; the rye straw is glazed with flint;the grasshoppers snap sharply as they fly up in front of you; thebird-songs have ceased; the ground crackles under foot; the eye ofday is brassy and merciless; and in harmony with all these thingsis the rattle of the mower and the hay-tedder.

IX

'T is an evidence of how directly we are related to Nature, that wemore or less sympathize with the weather, and take on the color ofthe day. Goethe said he worked easiest on a high barometer. One islike a chimney that draws well some days and won't draw at all onothers, and the secret is mainly in the condition of theatmosphere. Anything positive and decided with the weather is agood omen. A pouring rain may be more auspicious than a sleepingsunshine. When the stove draws well, the fogs and fumes will leaveyour mind.I find there is great virtue in the bare ground, and have been muchput out at times by those white angelic days we have in winter,such as Whittier has so well described in these lines:--

"Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament; No cloud above, no earth below, A universe of sky and snow."

On such days my spirit gets snow-blind; all things take on the samecolor, or no color; my thought loses its perspective; the innerworld is a blank like the outer, and all my great ideals arewrapped in the same monotonous and expressionless commonplace. Theblackest of black days are better.

Why does snow so kill the landscape and blot out our interest init? Not merely because it is cold, and the symbol of death,--for Iimagine as many inches of apple blossoms would have about the sameeffect,--but because it expresses nothing. White is a negative; aperfect blank. The eye was made for color, and for the earthytints, and, when these are denied it, the mind is very apt tosympathize and to suffer also.

Then when the sap begins to mount in the trees, and the springlanguor comes, does not one grow restless indoors? The sun puts outthe fire, the people say, and the spring sun certainly makes one'sintellectual light grow dim. Why should not a man sympathize withthe seasons and the moods and phases of Nature? He is an apple uponthis tree, or rather he is a babe at this breast, and what hisgreat mother feels affects him also.

X

I have frequently been surprised, in late fall and early winter, tosee how unequal or irregular was the encroachment of the frost uponthe earth. If there is suddenly a great fall in the mercury, thefrost lays siege to the soil and effects a lodgment here and there,and extends its conquests gradually. At one place in the field youcan easily run your staff through into the soft ground, when a fewrods farther on it will be as hard as a rock. A little covering ofdry grass or leaves is a great protection. The moist places holdout long, and the spring runs never freeze. You find the frost hasgone several inches into the plowed ground, but on going to thewoods, and poking away the leaves and debris under the hemlocks andcedars, you find there is no frost at all. The Earth freezes herears and toes and naked places first, and her body last.

If heat were visible, or if we should represent it say by smoke,then the December landscape would present a curious spectacle. Weshould see the smoke lying low over the meadows, thickest in thehollows and moist places, and where the turf is oldest and densest.It would cling to the fences and ravines. Under every evergreentree we should see the vapor rising and filling the branches, whilethe woods of pine and hemlock would be blue with it long after ithad disappeared from the open country. It would rise from the topsof the trees, and be carried this way and that with the wind. Thevalleys of the great rivers, like the Hudson, would overflow withit. Large bodies of water become regular magazines in which heat isstored during the summer, and they give it out again during thefall and early winter. The early frosts keep well back from theHudson, skulking behind the ridges, and hardly come over in sightat any point. But they grow bold as the season advances, till theriver's fires, too, I are put out and Winter covers it with hissnows.

XI

One of the strong and original strokes of Nature was when she madethe loon. It is always refreshing to contemplate a creature sopositive and characteristic. He is the great diver and flyer underwater. The loon is the genius loci of the wild northern lakes, assolitary as they are. Some birds represent the majesty of nature,like the eagles; others its ferocity, like the hawks; others itscunning, like the crow; others its sweetness and melody, like thesong-birds. The loon represents its wildness and solitariness. Itis cousin to the beaver. It has the feathers of a bird and the furof an animal, and the heart of both. It is as quick and cunning asit is bold and resolute. It dives with such marvelous quicknessthat the shot of the gunner get there just in time "to cut across acircle of descending tail feathers and a couple of little jets ofwater flung upward by the web feet of the loon." When disabled sothat it can neither dive nor fly, it is said to face its foe, lookhim in the face with its clear, piercing eye, and fight resolutelytill death. The gunners say there is something in its wailing,piteous cry, when dying, almost human in its agony. The loon is, inthe strictest sense, an aquatic fowl. It can barely walk upon theland, and one species at least cannot take flight from the shore.But in the water its feet are more than feet, and its wings morethan wings. It plunges into this denser air and flies withincredible speed. Its head and beak form a sharp point to itstapering neck. Its wings are far in front and its legs equally farin the rear, and its course through the crystal depths is like thespeed of an arrow. In the northern lakes it has been taken fortyfeet under water upon hooks baited for the great lake trout. I hadnever seen one till last fall, when one appeared on the river infront of my house. I knew instantly it was the loon. Who couldnot tell a loon a half mile or more away, though he had never seenone before? The river was like glass, and every movement of thebird as it sported about broke the surface into ripples, thatrevealed it far and wide. Presently a boat shot out from shore,and went ripping up the surface toward the loon. The creature atonce seemed to divine the intentions of the boatman, and sidledoff obliquely, keeping a sharp lookout as if to make sure it waspursued. A steamer came down and passed between them, and when theway was again clear, the loon was still swimming on the surface.Presently it disappeared under the water, and the boatman pulledsharp and hard. In a few moments the bird reappeared some rodsfarther on, as if to make an observation. Seeing it was beingpursued, and no mistake, it dived quickly, and, when it came upagain, had gone many times as far as the boat had in the same spaceof time. Then it dived again, and distanced its pursuer so easilythat he gave over the chase and rested upon his oars. But the birdmade a final plunge, and, when it emerged upon the surface again,it was over a mile away. Its course must have been, and doubtlesswas, an actual flight under water, and half as fast as the crowflies in the air.

The loon would have delighted the old poets. Its wild, demoniaclaughter awakens the echoes on the solitary lakes, and its ferityand hardiness are kindred to those robust spirits.

XII

One notable difference between man and the four-footed animalswhich has often occurred to me is in the eye, and the greaterperfection, or rather supremacy, of the sense of sight in the humanspecies. All the animals--the dog, the fox, the wolf, the deer, thecow, the horse--depend mainly upon the senses of hearing and smell.Almost their entire powers of discrimination are confined to thesetwo senses. The dog picks his master out of the crowd by smell, andthe cow her calf out of the herd. Sight is only partialrecognition. The question can only be settled beyond all doubt bythe aid of the nose. The fox, alert and cunning as he is, will passwithin a few yards of the hunter and not know him from a stump. Asquirrel will run across your lap, and a marmot between your feet,if you are motionless. When a herd of cattle see a strange object,they are not satisfied till each one has sniffed it; and the horseis cured of his fright at the robe, or the meal-bag, or otherobject, as soon as he can be induced to smell it. There is a greatdeal of speculation in the eye of an animal, but very littlescience. Then you cannot catch an animal's eye; he looks at you,but not into your eye. The dog directs his gaze toward your face,but, for aught you can tell, it centres upon your mouth or nose.The same with your horse or cow. Their eye is vague and indefinite.

Not so with the birds. The bird has the human eye in its clearness,its power, and its supremacy over the other senses. How acute theirsense of smell may be is uncertain; their hearing is sharp enough,but their vision is the most remarkable. A crow or a hawk, or anyof the larger birds, will not mistake you for a stump or a rock,stand you never so still amid the bushes. But they cannot separateyou from your horse or team. A hawk reads a man on horseback as oneanimal, and reads it as a horse. None of the sharp-scented animalscould be thus deceived.

The bird has man's brain also in its size. The brain of a song-birdis even much larger in proportion than that of the greatest humanmonarch, and its life is correspondingly intense and high-strung.But the bird's eye is superficial. It is on the outside of hishead. It is round, that it may take in a full circle at a glance.

All the quadrupeds emphasize their direct forward gaze by acorresponding movement of the ears, as if to supplement and aid onesense with another. But man's eye seldom needs the confirmation ofhis ear, while it is so set, and his head so poised, that his lookis forcible and pointed without being thus seconded.